A wheel turns because of its encounter with the
surface of the road; spinning in the air it goes
nowhere. Rubbing two sticks together produces heat and
light; one stick alone is just a stick. In both cases,
it is friction that produces movement, action, effect.
Challenging the widespread view that globalization
invariably signifies a 'clash' of cultures,
anthropologist Anna Tsing here develops friction in its
place as a metaphor for the diverse and conflicting
social interactions that make up our contemporary world.
She focuses on one particular 'zone of awkward
engagement' - the rainforests of Indonesia - where in
the 1980's and the 1990's capitalist interests
increasingly reshaped the landscape not so much through
corporate design as through awkward chains of legal and
illegal entrepreneurs that wrested the land from
previous claimants, creating resources for distant
markets.In response, environmental movements arose to
defend the rainforests and the communities of people who
live in them.Not confined to a village, a province, or a
nation, the social drama of the Indonesian rainforest
includes local and national environmentalists,
international science, North American investors,
advocates for Brazilian rubber tappers, UN funding
agencies, mountaineers, village elders, and urban
students, among others - all combining in unpredictable,
messy misunderstandings, but misunderstandings that
sometimes work out. Providing a portfolio of methods to
study global interconnections, Tsing shows how curious
and creative cultural differences are in the grip of
worldly encounter, and how much is overlooked in
contemporary theories of the global. |
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